A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.

The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections.... But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: In Fuminori Nakamura's new novel, the main character weaves along the streets of Tokyo pickpocketing his way through the flow of humanity, as if in a dream. He lifts wallets filled with cash and credit cards with a masterful ease, his mind occupied with a trance-like debate about whether to care anymore. Whether to care about the young kid he sees clumsily stealing food at a supermarket. Whether to care about his partner, who disappeared after a botched robbery years ago. Oscillating between the real connection he establishes with the shoplifting boy and the drug-like daze of his own criminal past, the thief drifts back into the clutches of the mastermind of that ill-fated robbery. And the thief starts to wake up, only to realize that a noose is being carefully, and slowly, drawn around his neck. --Benjamin Moebius

About the Author:

Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Oe Prize, Japan’s largest literary award, and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is the recipient of the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction. He lives in Tokyo with his wife.

Book Description Soho Crime, 2012. Book Condition: New. Brand New, Unread Copy in Perfect Condition. A+ Customer Service! Summary: Wall Street Journal 10 BEST FICTON OF THE YEAR Wall Street Journal 10 BEST MYSTERY BOOKS OF THE YEAR World Literature Today NOTABLE TRANSLATION " The Thief brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Doestoevsky . A chilling philosophical thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated." - The Wall Street Journal , BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR selection "Nakamura's prose is cut-to-the-bone lean, but it moves across the page with a seductive, even voluptuous agility. I defy you not to finish the book in a single sitting." - Richmond Times Dispatch "His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hardboiled detective writing." - Daily Beast "Fascinating. I want to write something like The Thief someday myself." - Natsuo Kirino , bestselling author of Edgar-nominated Out and Grotesque "It's simple and utterly compelling - great beach reading for the deeply cynical. If you crossed Michael Connelly and Camus and translated it from Japanese." - Grantland "Surreal." - Sacramento Bee "Page-Turner" pick "Disguised as fast-paced, shock-fueled crime fiction, Thief resonates even more as a treatise on contemporary disconnect and paralyzing isolation." - Library Journal "I was deeply impressed with The Thief . It is fresh." - Kenzaburo Oe , Nobel Prizewinning author of A Personal Matter "Nakamura's memorable antihero, at once as believably efficient as Donald Westlake's Parker and as disaffected as a Camus protagonist, will impress genre and literary readers alike." - Publishers Weekly "Fast-paced, elegantly written, and rife with the symbols of inevitability." - ForeWord "Compulsively readable for its portrait of a dark, crumbling, graffiti-scarred Tokyo-and the desire to understand the mysterious thief." - Booklist "The drily philosophical tone and the noir atmosphere combine perfectly, providing a rapid and enjoyable "read" that is nonetheless cool and distant, provoking the reader to think about (as much as experience) the tale." - International Noir Fiction " The Thief manages to wrap you up in its pages, tightly, before you are quite aware of it." - Mystery Scene "Nakamura succeeds in creating a complicated crime novel in which the focus is not on the crimes themselves but rather on the psychology and physicality of the criminal. The book's power inheres in the voice of the thief, which is itself as meticulously rendered as the thief's every action." - Three Percent "Unique and engrossing." - Mystery People "Readers will be enthralled by this story that offers an extremely surprising ending."- Suspense Magazine "Along the way the reader catches glimpses of Japan and its lifestyle, which is far from a pretty picture" - Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine "So many issues are raised in this novel. It is wonderfully brief, and spare, much like something Hemingway would write." - Dolce Bellezza Blog From the Hardcover edition. Bookseller Inventory # ABE_book_new_1616950218